


Effectively Wild

by light_source



Series: High Heat [51]
Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:57:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light_source/pseuds/light_source
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here and now, in the uncanny quiet, Tim’s mind churns. Maybe he should do something with his hands or shut his eyes, even, just so he doesn’t have to look at Posey’s wide-eyed amazement. But he can’t. </p><p>It dawns on him that this is the point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Effectively Wild

 

**February 2011**   
**Scottsdale**

When the sun starts to knife through the blinds, the bulldog wakes him, catapulting himself onto the bed and burrowing his big bony face in Tim’s neck. Lincecum groans. _Posey‘s left the door open._

When he yawns, his swollen lips crack and sting. He rolls onto his back. With the fingers of his pitching hand he scratches the furry wrinkles between the dog’s ears. Cy grunts a little, butting his forehead against Tim’s hand.

Tim stretches himself out, fingers wrapping around the top edge of the headboard and his toes curling around the bunched and ropy sheets. Then he hurls his arms out crosswise, flexing his shoulder blades, settling himself into the cool middle of the empty bed. _Gone,_ he thinks to himself, lifting his chin away from the bulldog, who’s sliming his ear. _Fucking thank God for that._

He hates the morning-after ritual, the script everybody else seems to accept without thinking. _Dude, you fucked my brains out. Oh, yeah, and there’s OJ in the fridge._ The broad daylightness of it, the sticky tied-off condoms in the wastebasket and the empties clinking around halfway under the bed.  Everything seems like a mistake, a lapse in judgment that sooner or later is gonna come back and bite you in the ass.

And when he leaves - what you’re supposed to do. You make sure you’re in the kitchen, or on the couch watching TV with your back to the door, when you say _later_ so that it means only that and nothing more. After the door slams you wait a couple minutes. Check your messages and last night’s scores. Do what you need to do to make enough time go by so that when you pull into the players’ parking lot, he’s not there.

//

Turns out, at home and abroad, Tim’s got nothing to be worried about. Buster, who excels at so many things, is a past master of the art of keeping his distance.

That morning, when Tim blows into the locker room six minutes late, out of breath and hair still wet from the shower, Posey barely glances at him. When Tim drops his messenger bag in front of his locker, fumbling, Posey’s not there to notice. He’s already striding off in the direction of Bochy’s office.

Later, as Tim’s walking past the door of the weight room, Posey’s in there spotting Cain on the bench press. The two of them are umbilically connected by a pair of shared iPod earbuds. Posey’s leaning over so far that sweat’s dripping off him onto Cain’s face. Buster’s gloved hands are spread ready to grab.

- _Don’t you dare touch it,_ Cain squeezes the words out, his face puffy and red with effort, _\- you dog._

When Cain finally lowers the barbell with a grunt and clanks it back into the forks of the rack, he sits up, rubbing his hands. Posey high-fives him. Then they’re both shouting along to some song. Buster’s playing air guitar, and Cain’s stabbing his index finger at himself in time with the words.

_I wanna talk about me_   
_Wanna talk about I_   
_Wanna talk about number one_   
_Oh my me my_

//

A couple days later he’s walking out to the players’ parking lot after practice. Three cars down, there’s Buster standing next to his Camry, his considerable ass propping open the driver’s side door. There’s a bent-straight coathanger in his hand. Inside the car, Madison Bumgarner’s long frame sprawls half-in and half-out of the driver’s seat, legs flailing like the car’s got him in its maw and it’s eating him alive. His head and arms are under the dashboard, where he’s fiddling with a bunch of wires poking out like snakeheads.

When Buster looks up and sees him, Tim can’t not walk over there.

\- ‘Sup?

\- Oh, hey, Timmy, says Posey. - Madison’s - . Can’t find my car keys.

He pokes his head into the car and mumbles something to Madison, muffled, that Tim can’t hear.

\- You need a ride? says Tim.

\- Thanks but no, says Posey. - Bum got it open - jeez, I didn’t know you could even still _do_ that with automatic locks, dude’s got mad ghetto skills. He’s hotwiring it. I got an extra set a keys at home. Th'other ones’ll turn up, you know how that is.

Buster turns and slaps the screwdriver he’s holding into Madison’s greasy outstretched palm. Then the lefty sits up in the front seat. Suddenly he and Buster have gone quiet. They’re looking at Tim like they’re waiting for something.

Walking back to his own car, Tim feels oddly off-balance. He wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of even a few minutes alone in a car with Posey; he should be relieved to be off the hook.

So why isn’t he?

//

Zito, on the other hand, can’t take a hint. Ever since the night Tim relented, against his better judgment, Barry’s been in his face. Every other day he leaves a trail of texts on Tim’s phone, texts that Tim knows better than to answer. And every few days Tim’s call log is full of late-night dial-and-hang-ups that are Barry’s way of saying _I know you don’t want to talk to me but._ Tim puts the ring on vibrate when he goes to bed, but that doesn’t keep him from waking in the middle of the night to the call-flash, a flare in the dark.

It takes some self-control not to pick up. And then even his iPhone second-guesses him, badgering him with _ARE YOU SURE?_ when he presses delete.

Tim lets himself think about Zito only when he’s running, because that’s when he can drown the feelings with a blast of speed that turns into pain. Johnnie Apodaca, the evening clubbie who’s always there till eleven, lets him into the side door of the compound. He uses the overflow field because it’s got the highest fences. Lungs searing, he imagines his muscles whitening with effort. When he runs himself out like this, sometimes he stumbles down onto to his knees at the end of the interval. _Kneeling,_ he realizes one night. He’s at the end of the track, the big lights blazing above him, his stomach heaving itself up into his mouth.

But it’s the right kind of kneeling. The kind that means purity and humility and striving. Emptying yourself out till you’re nothing more than flesh wrapped around air.

Not the kind of kneeling that has the sour tang of the front seats of cars and airport bathroom stalls, something that’s not worth the cost of stealing.

//

**April 2011**   
**Los Angeles**

Tim’s high wall of resolve takes a hit when the team gets to Los Angeles for the season-opener against the Dodgers.

It’s a cool clear early-spring day in southern California, the sky all but empty and the Hollywood hills greenish across the glinting valley. The Giants have just checked in to the posh Langham in the Pasadena foothills, game one tomorrow at 1:05. Tim’s hooked his laptop up to the TV and is splayed out on his hotel bed watching _The Matrix_ again when suddenly Wilson’s out in the hallway pounding on his door, shouting through it in his surfer-boy voice: _Zito’s in the hospital - car wreck._

//

All the horrific imagining he’d done in the cab, the images of Zito lying burned and broken and bloody in the street, dissolves when Tim charges into Barry’s room at Cedars-Sinai. Zito’s sitting up in bed in a blue-dotted hospital gown, his nose bandaged like a prizefighter’s but otherwise looking nothing more than grumpy. He’s talking sharply at a scrubs-wearing clipboard-carrying guy with a shaved head. Scrubs guy tracks Zito’s surprised eyes and turns to see Tim in the doorway. He scuttles out of the room, wheezing something under his breath.

\- Some bimbo ran the red, says Zito all at once, his voice high and hoarse. He’s grey-faced and gaunt and in addition to the nose thing, there’s also a shiny bandage stretched across half his forehead. - T-boned me. Prolly texting, but she’s not gonna say it, not in front of the cops. They were there all over the place, like five patrol cars.

Seeing Tim’s raised eyebrows, ZIto waves one hand dismissively. - I’m off the hook, basically. There were a bunch of people saw what happened, two guys who stuck around to talk to the cops. In WeHo, that light on West Sunset where that Lebanese place is, across from D&G?  We had dinner there that time. Remember? You didn’t - . You hated it.

When Tim says nothing, Zito drops into a quiet so dense that they can hear each other breathing. He looks up again.

\- I’m fine, Timmy, it’s just a few bruises. The car’s more fucked up than I am.

Tim wishes he could just walk normally across the room to the side of the bed, but suddenly he feels like he’s at the end of a stupid chick flick when the big music starts. He folds himself carefully into the only chair, right by the door, chocking the wheels with the toes of his Vans.

What Zito was doing all the way across town needs no explanation. Barry’s contract specifies that when the Giants play in Los Angeles, he’s entitled to stay at his place in the Hollywood hills rather than with the team in Pasadena. Tim shifts a little in his chair, thinking about that big quiet empty house, so familiar to him that he can find his way around it in the dark.

For some reason Zito’s stopped talking yet again, and Tim finds himself equally at a loss for words. Tim can feel himself sweating - two t-shirts and a hoodie are too many layers for LA, and for running through hospital hallways - and his hair’s wet, the ends sticking to the inside of his neck. He breathes in and the scent of his own skin comes clear to him, glassy and opaque.

There’s something about how stopped-in-his-tracks Zito looks, how dazed and angry, that grabs ahold of Tim and shakes him. _This is so not happening,_ he hears himself thinking as his cock starts to stiffen in his jeans. The air starts to shimmer, and there’s that buzz that starts faint and grows inside him like the roar of an approaching airplane, urgent and promising the sweetness he’s been denying himself for no clear reason.

\- Jesus, Timmy, says Zito hoarsely, - what I have to do to get you to talk to me.

Tim’s eyes swerve up from the floor, the wall, the bank of beeping machines that’s hovering next to Zito’s bed. He can’t not look at Zito, and that’s unfortunate, because as their eyes level, Tim can feel his heart pounding in the side of his neck as he rises and walks over to the bed.

Tim’s mouth is ajar - he can’t seem to grab a breath - so when Zito stretches out his hand, his wrist pale, it’s easy for him to pull Tim in, tilt his nose sideways and cover Tim’s lips with his own, salty and sweet. The kiss is soft at first, as though there’s an apology behind it, but when their tongues meet, Tim can’t keep from shaking a little, and he has to reach his own hands up to Zito’s neck to steady himself. The left-hander’s hair is long and wild and soft in Tim’s fingers, and through the veil of hospital disinfectant Tim is nearly blinded by Barry’s scent, the clean smell of coffee and grass and glove leather. It’s an almost intolerable reminder of what was, and Tim sinks into it with a sense of falling that has no fear in it, just the weightless rush of flight.

But his heart’s still pounding as he tears away blindly, wheels and cuts out the door, leaving it ajar behind him. And still, in the noiseless gleaming elevator and out into the warm clear March night air. On the cab ride back, he settles himself in the crack between the seat and the window, out of range of the cabbie’s mirror, and lets his mind go blank.

//

Tim stopped believing in God in sophomore year in high school. Right before Thanksgiving, to be precise, when his mom walked out on them, leaving behind a nothingness that got bigger the more his dad tried to pretend it wasn’t there.

The only talisman he still believes in looks religious, but in fact it’s got nothing to do with the church of his childhood. It’s a four-buck saints bracelet that he won rookie year as a prize for doing the best behind-his-back imitation of Randy Johnson’s warmup routine. (Matt Cain, who came in second, won a can of St. Jude spray to use on his bat, St. Jude being the patron saint of hopeless causes.) It’s little more than a bunch of square wooden tiles strung on double elastic, each with an enameled picture of a saint. The day after he won it, when they were playing the D-Backs, he’d struck out twelve in seven. He's worn it ever since.

He’s gotten fined twice for wearing it on the mound when he pitches because MLB’s got this stupid rule one-point-one-one, _distracting jewelry._ But he feels exposed and defenseless without it.

Part of its charm is the way it comes back. In Cleveland he left it behind in his hotel room, and before he’d even missed it, as they were getting on the plane, Murph had handed him a hotel-stationery envelope that was sealed up tight over something bumpy. Inside was the bracelet, wadded up in a piece of Kleenex, with a hard-to-read note from the chambermaid.

These days, he’s more careful where he puts it when he takes it off. But he’d still nearly lost it again one day on Franklin, coming out of a restaurant, when the elastic broke and the whole thing slipped noiselessly off his wrist as he was walking along tucking his rolled-up _Chronicle_ into his messenger bag. An old Chinese lady with a Hefty bag of empty cans materialized out of nowhere and grabbed his sleeve, pointing at where the tiles had scattered on the cement.

The amazement he’d felt when it’d refused to stay lost, that feeling of _it’s my lucky piece,_ washes over him whenever he slips it on.  

//

On an overcast day in mid-April, in his first home start of the season, Zito catches a cleat coming off the mound. Tim sees it from the dugout, where he's lounging with Burriss, both arms over the lip. As he watches Groeschner kneeling in front of Barry, shouting questions into his ear, Tim finds himself snapping the frayed elastic of his bracelet, letting his fingers puzzle over the rubbed-off finish of the B.V.M. square. _Like I’m praying?_ he thinks with a snort, _what the fuck is that about?_

As the trainers hoist Zito to his feet, as his ears flood with the sound of the crowd cheering, Tim realizes something that backs him right down off the concrete step onto the bench. He’s not praying for Barry to be OK.

No - he’s hoping for at least the 15-day DL. That and distance - a long rehab in Richmond or Fresno. Any place, as long as it’s not here.

He gets his wish. 

Zito’s ankle is badly sprained, so swollen by the time they get him into the training room that they have to cut his shoe off with crash scissors. There’s havoc and half-shut doors and it becomes another bullpen game that they play with one eye closed, everyone finding reasons not to think about what’s happened.

What’s weird is how fast Zito disappears after that afternoon, when he hobbles out of the clubhouse on crutches, two clubbies trailing behind him draped with clothes that are still on the hangers, dragging duffle bags.

The next day, when Huff tries to make a joke about it, saying _fuck, you guys, it’s like he’s been snuffed by the mob or something,_ everyone’s eyes suddenly flicker away and get hazy. Guys start retying their gloves and barking at the clubbies about nothing. It's what they’ve all been thinking, but only Huff is fool enough to say it.  

//

Less than twenty-four hours later, Barry’s locker is stacked with bunged-up banker’s boxes. The boxes belong to Zito’s call-up replacement, Ryan Vogelsong, a veteran who’s eager to slough off the tarry residue of too many years on the road. Vogey - the nickname slides out and sticks immediately - is an intense guy with a soft voice, permanently flaring nostrils, and a reputation for throwing inside at batters that piss him off. At first there’s a bubble of newness around Vogelsong that keeps everyone polite and distant; later it becomes a bubble of respect tinged with fear. There’s something defiant about Vogey’s quietness, the way he lets a couple seconds fall before he answers a question. He’s thirty-four and he’s been pinballing around the leagues, numberless triple-A teams and the Pirates and Phillies and Angels, two different teams in Japan. For Vogey, this call-up is the last few inches of a long leash that’s about to reach its buckle end.

In the offseason Vogelsong apparently lives somewhere in the back woods of Pennsylvania, where he enjoys snow shoveling and duck hunting. And he’s accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior.

When Tim’s mind gets going on Zito, he lets his eyes track over to where Barry used to dress, where Vogey’s hung a cross in the top right-hand corner of his locker. That’s all Tim needs to stay on track, stern and pure and focused on the things that count.

//

The 2010 championship brought a shitstorm of publicity down on Tim’s head. People are always saying they want to be famous, but Tim’s learned that the spotlight has very little upside. Money, yes; and he likes the fact that he’ll never again have to pay for a drink in San Francisco. But the legal conferences and investment meetings for the advertising contracts turned out to be as tedious as the media calls. At one point, Bud Selig had actually referred to him as _an important MLB property._

There was even a coffee-table book that he’d agreed to shoot long before the Giants had had any clue that they’d win it all that year. The photographer had hoodwinked him into it, accidentally-on-purpose spilling cappuccino all over him at a Starbuck’s and pretending not to know who he was. By the time he found himself apologizing for _her_ clumsiness, she’d gotten him to give up his address in Sausalito and his cell number. A few days later she was knocking on his patio door before breakfast, all Joker lipstick and pre-wrecked jeans.

And the day-in-the-life video. Right after Christmas, Jayme Sire’d shown up at his condo with a cameraman and a sound crew and marched him through a grim series of wholesome activities, including a tour of his closet and a visit to the muddy and deserted infield at Liberty High. He still hasn’t lived down the footage of himself driving, singing along to Hall & Oates. Zito refers to the video as  _a day in the life of the guy who has no life._

The interview that Tim’s come to regret most is the New York _Times_ piece that came out during spring training. Every time he thinks of it now, he cringes. But not because of the high-fashion shots of his long hair or the squirrely mustache he’d grown over the offseason. Not because of way Rags had ticked off a list of his shortcomings. Not because the writer had quoted Tim’s mocking salute to the Ryan Express.

What Tim would most like to take back is what he'd said about watching film -  and implicitly, about working with Posey. When the reporter asked him about his reputation for goofing off in the clubhouse before his starts, the words had just come tumbling out of his mouth. _\- I stick to my strengths as opposed to going after everyone’s weaknesses_ , he’d said. _\- If you can hit it, come hit it._

//

Now he and Posey are now back to ignoring each other. That’s exactly what it was like in their first season together, when Tim had had the worst slump of his major-league career.

It was August 2010, two months after Buster’d been called up and a month after Bengie Molina had been traded. Tim’s five consecutive losses and an ERA north of seven wasn’t his first slump - he’d always been plagued by walks and wildness - but it was notable in a season when the Giants were trying to stay in the pennant race and the analysts had begun to make noise about Tim’s diminishing velocity and control. Buster Posey, the $6 million bonus baby, was now catching the Giants’ storied pitching staff, so what could possibly be wrong? The rumor mill smoked. Lincecum resented losing Molina to this rookie wonder-boy; the left-coast stoner and the Georgia good ole boy had nothing to say to each other.

Tim dealt with Buster by refusing to watch film. He wasn’t pissy about it; he just always found other things to do, like scootering around the clubhouse in a laundry basket.  Or wolfing down a Choco Taco on the field right before doing his warmup stretches. Meanwhile Posey was in the video room studying and planning and probably (Tim liked to think) fuming at the fact that he had to study while The Franchise could goof off and still ace the test.

Buster must have said something to someone, because the skipper had called Tim in to his office the day before their second August start. When Bochy had scowled at the wall and said “Now, Timmy,” Lincecum had known what was coming: The Game According to Buster. Pitcher and catcher were supposed to collaborate, watching tape and figuring out how to pitch batters, drawing up a game plan that left no room for surprises. Or spontaneity.

When Tim emerged from Bochy’s office, his pits damp and his jaw locked into a vise of pissed-offedness, he had to pass by Posey sitting with two scouts in the video room, the three of them parked in front of a bank of monitors. As Tim came to a stop in the doorframe, Buster had spun around in his chair to face him, arms crossed, lips pressed together and eyebrows low over those Eagle Scout eyes.

\- Thanks so much, Posey, Tim had said, noticing that both scouts were focusing intently on the screens rather than at him, - for all the hard work. I’m _sure_ it’ll pay off.

Tim had gone right back to his game of dominoes, and by warm-up he’d taken Eugenio Velez for a hundred and seventy-five bucks.

Later, though, during the game, things got bunched up and tangled. They’d lost again, partly because there’d been some defensive clownage, but a lot of it was Tim’s fault. He’d given up six walks, nine hits and seven runs. Bochy’d yanked him after his second batter in the fifth.

In the fourth, Tim had walked two, given up three hits and two runs and been called for one wild pitch. He’d needed thirty-seven pitches to put away the side. That inning, though, there’d been one out he’d been pleased with - the second, when he’d gotten the guy to whiff on three different pitches. What was particularly, evilly satisfying was how bad that at-bat made Buster look. On the strikeout pitch, Posey’d set up inside, and when the pitch went the other way he’d had to scramble over himself to get his glove on the ball. It’d squirted out of his grasp and allowed the runner at first to steal.

The passed ball wasn’t Posey’s fault. The catcher had called for a heater low and inside, but Tim hadn’t bothered to shake Buster off; he’d just gone ahead and thrown the down-and-away slider that felt right to him at the moment. As the batter slunk off, Posey had shoved back his mask and glared at Lincecum, spitting something that looked like it started with _you’re fuckin’ -_ . His throw back to the mound smacked like a strike into Tim’s glove.

But as he was getting his grip on the next pitch, Tim had just grinned slowly at Buster and shrugged, as if to say _if you can catch it, come catch it._

//

**May 20, 2011**   
**San Francisco**

So today, when Tim plunks himself down into the mesh-backed video-room chair next to Buster, he doesn’t expect much. Tonight Vogelsong starts the first of three against Oakland, and tomorrow Tim’s scheduled to face Brett Anderson in one of those four o’clock games where the shadows play havoc with the field. When Posey says _hey_ without taking his eyes from the computer screen, Tim has to fight back the temptation to tip back in his chair and lounge.

\- Ryan Sweeney, says Posey eventually, his face blued by the screen - you gotta be careful pitching him outside, he likes the low ball.

Buster reaches past where Tim’s sitting and clicks the mouse of the next-one-over computer.

\- That’s what he does to the slider, says Posey, as the bat cracks and the crowd roars. He clicks pause. - Problem is, he’s gonna see you really well if you try to jam him. Posey points at the screen in front of him. - Look at his stance, Timmy. See how his bat comes back like that, down over his shoulder, when the pitch goes? Really quick adjustment.

\- I hate leftys, says Tim.

\- Yeah, well, says Buster drily, - they don’t like you either. But Sweeney’s batting three-thirteen, and he’s got a great eye. You’re not careful, he’s gonna make you throw thirty pitches.

\- You memorize all this stuff? says Tim, trying for neutral.

\- I can’t fit it all on the inside of my hand, says Posey, puffing out a scornful breath. - Somebody’s gotta keep track.

Tim sits back. His arms clutch up reflexively over his chest. They’re silent for a long stretch while Posey queues up six more Sweeney at-bats, his hands shuffling by feel between the mice that control the three video panels.

For a long time, Tim can feel the resentment stacked up like a wall between them, Posey’s slow southern vowels droning against the buzz of the video clips. Patiently, as though he’s talking to a fifth-grader, Buster walks Tim once through the probables, and then back through Powell and Crisp and Sweeney, all three cameras including side and top. Tim sighs and squirms and lets his eyes glaze over as though he’s waiting for the bell.

Turns out, though, it’s detective work, and that intrigues him. Eventually he relaxes a little, and then he finds himself leaning in, his feet roping around the footrails of his chair. He’s moved closer, propped his head on his elbow so that he can use the other arm to reach past Posey to the third screen to point at how Crisp’s using his bat head.

\- Yeah, says Posey, - Good call, Timmy. I never saw that, it’s like the way he puts his foot. So what do you think, when you’re ahead, the splitter?

Buster turns a little - he’s framed his thumb and fingers around his jaw thinking, ring finger caught between his teeth. He just looks at Tim a little, and then harder, till Tim, feeling it, shifts his eyes back to the middle screen. There’s a pause, and then they both start talking at once. Tim can’t believe there’s actually a flush climbing up his neck.

\- Zuk might be catching tomorrow, says Buster evenly, - not Powell. And that’s all good, because Zuk tends to take a first-pitch strike and he’s fun to whiff. Look at him spin.

Buster’s smiling, Tim notices, but at the screen. He drags the slider back so they can rewatch Suzuki whack fruitlessly at a pitch.

\- But you can’t count on it, the catcher continues. - Powell’s got some hamstring thing but it’s minor, so Zuk’s prolly only catching one game of the series. Let’s - let’s run that Powell at-bat one more time - watch his timing on the curve.

Tim, who has to crane in to see, suddenly feels like he can’t sit there any longer, his legs seized by some strange compulsion to move. His forearms feel tight and angry, so he knits his fingers and stretches both arms out, shifting his shoulders.

Buster turns and looks straight at him. Posey’s relaxed a little, those big shoulders widened, stretching his checkered shirt against the chair back. As Tim slowly unlocks his fingers and wraps his hands back around the chair arms, he can’t help noticing how close they’ve wound up sitting, thighs just about to touch.

\- We been at this an hour and a half, says Posey, all of a sudden, but gently.

Glancing up, feeling those eyes so much bluer up close, Tim can’t help smiling. Slowly, Buster’s mouth twitches and what starts as a smile becomes a full-blast grin as he if he too sees what’s going on her- what’s dangerous and perfect about the fact that Tim is thinking about what it’d feel like to get his mouth on the side of Buster’s neck.

\- We done?

\- Yeah, says Tim, softly.

The air between them hums with what’s waiting there. What belongs anywhere but in the video room. Tim finally shoves back his chair and stands up.

\- For now. And hey, Posey, he says as he reaches the door, puts one hand on the jamb and half-turns towards the catcher: - Thanks.

That evening Vogey starts and Tim’s in the dugout like always. But this time, between all the routine seed-spitting and shit-talking and ducking into the clubhouse to avoid Amy G, he sees the game differently. The outline of the catcher’s thighs, the way Posey flexes himself easily, effortlessly to receive, becomes something he can’t keep his eyes off.

Then, and after, and in the middle of that night, it wakes him from his dreams.

//

**May 21, 2011**   
**San Francisco**

Game day Tim comes to late and groggy and saturated with fail, with the memory of his appalling start last week in Colorado. And there’s the residue of last night’s dreams, his hands wrapped around Buster’s hips and his mouth on Buster’s cock, Buster’s eyes squeezed shut and those white teeth biting on the silent air.

When he gets to the clubhouse he puts on his game face, and for the next couple of hours he keeps himself strictly to the periphery the way real pitchers are supposed to do. He starts feeling like himself again only at four o’clock, when he’s throwing his eight into the glove of a man he’s having trouble looking at.

At first he’s feeling blind and clumsy and choking on his own spit. He refocuses on what’s familiar: C.B. Buckner, the plate ump, tall and slim back there, and the shadows also tall and thin from the late-afternoon light. He squats and reties his shoelaces and gives himself a few long breaths. He thinks a little, and then he doesn’t.

It takes fourteen pitches all over the place, but he gets both Crisp and Barton to whiff on his offspeed stuff and both of them ground out. OK, good. But Sweeney sees him as well as Buster predicted he would, taking two strikes and laying off or fouling off everything else. Finally, on the tenth pitch, he jacks a base hit to right field.

Posey pulls his mask off and walks himself out to the mound. His cheek’s nearly next to Tim’s, his hand flat and warm on the damp small of Tim’s back. He’s sweating and his eyes are shining and Tim can sense the tension sheeting off him like water.

\- You know, Timmy, Posey says quietly, - you got this. _We_ got this. Just fuckin’ stop thinking and do it.

For Conor Jackson, who’s hitting cleanup, Posey asks for a fastball inside, and Tim misses. He scuds the next pitch in front of the plate, and when the third pitch, a slider, tails off low and away, Tim feels the sweat break on the sides of his neck, on his palms. After Jackson’s third take, he can’t even manage to glove the return ball Posey tosses back to him. There he is, in front of the national audience that’s tuned in to watch the Saturday-afternoon game, scrabbling in the dirt.

His fourth pitch, a fastball at the knees called for a strike, has so much nasty and random slide that Posey has to stretch sideways to get it.

When Posey asks him for the same pitch again he hesitates, but when he squints and sees Buster’s lips mouthing _don’t think, it can only hurt the ball club,_ that exact same pitch thrown precisely the same way gets Jackson to fly out to right.

The rest of the game is like shooting skeet. Buster calls the sequences, moving the ball in and around and asking for it dead in the dirt. The pitches snap out of Tim’s hand, some at strange angles that recall his old familiar wildness, but the ones that are supposed to crack like shots into Posey’s glove. It's wildness all right, but it's effective wildness. The batters start to seem almost beside the point.

Together they dismiss twenty-one in a row.

By the eighth, Tim’s thrown a hundred and he’s flagging a little. When Landon Powell gets a base hit, Tim sees Wilson trotting up the left field line to warm up in the bullpen. He pauses a minute while he’s working a new ball, tucks his glove between his knees, rubs his eyes. His hair’s an unruly rope winched around his neck, and he twists it back behind his ears before he clamps his cap back on his head.

It takes six pitches, but he strikes Pennington out looking. The way Powell gives him the stinkeye as he slinks away from first makes Tim realize he’s coming back out for the ninth.

//

After the game and the interviews and the obligatory partying, the ache that starts to swallow Tim up as he drives home has nothing to do with his pitching arm.  He’s got a headache from the blown-out sound systems of the clubs they’d hit in the postgame fracas, but it’s not that either.

As he’s sitting in the car waiting at a light on Mariposa, a guy with dreads and paint-stained cargo pants spies Tim through the windshield. Mid-crosswalk, the guy stumbles to a stop, raising up his brown-bagged bottle in Tim’s general direction, swaying in the yellow street light. It’s a salute that reminds Tim that he can never entirely escape what the city has made of him, the man he’s agreed to be.

At home, when the doorbell rings, he’s got a fork in the can of dog food and the pups are whirling around his legs yipping, their toenails scrabbling on the slate floor.

He doesn’t flip on the entryway light. He doesn’t need to.  Wordlessly Posey steps in to the foyer, rubbing his bicep with one hand, looking as composed and relentless as a cop.

//

Posey moves deliberately, like he’s got every second clocked. Having to wait makes Tim feel it all the more when Buster raises one hand up and strokes Tim’s hair back behind his ear. Then Posey’s thumb is sliding warm against Tim’s temple, his fingers working their way into a tangle with Tim’s hair.

Here in the entryway, in the uncanny quiet, Tim’s mind churns. Maybe he should do something with his hands or shut his eyes even, just so he doesn’t have to look at Posey’s wide-eyed amazement. But he can’t. It dawns on him that this is the point.

The game had gone on for hours. And even though they’d had a couple one-two-three innings, it’d taken a hundred and thirty-three pitches to get the last batter out.  

When the crowd had finally roared in jubilation - a complete-game shutout - Tim had just stood there, waiting, as Buster trotted out to him, blank-faced and dutiful, tossing him the game ball, giving him the regulation high-five and the requisite backslap. Then they’d bro-hugged their way through the victory lineup and back to the dugout.

Waiting.  Till now.   _Now._

Buster slides the palm of his other hand under Tim’s collar till it rests on the hollow of his collarbone. Then he slowly slides his hand up the pitcher’s long neck until he’s drawn Tim’s face between his hands. He touches the edge of his tongue to his top lip and then, as Tim’s standing there, idiotically frozen in amazement, Posey tips his nose and brings his mouth to Tim’s.

Tim feels himself start when Buster’s mouth touches his. He’s been breathing him in; the catcher smells like clean clothes and bubble gum. As Buster’s lower lip slowly, softly grazes Tim’s teeth, something in the pitcher lets go. He’s totally befuddled - is it permission? Is he that afraid of Posey? - but after a moment it doesn’t matter, because now he’s found his wits and his hands.

When he slides one palm up under Buster’s jacket he feels the catcher’s nipple stiffen under his thumb and his mouth smiles against Buster’s. He unworks the buttons on Posey’s shirt one-handed, and as his hands find bare skin he can feel the heat coming off of Posey, the insistent push of his heart. His eyes close, Buster’s tongue works slippery and hot against his, and everything around him begins to move.

Tim’s so hot and messed up and dizzy from what Posey’s doing with his mouth and his hands that he lets the catcher shuffle him backward and drop him down onto the couch, and then Posey’s on his knees between Tim’s legs, two bright flags along his high cheekbones, the edges of his teeth white in the half-light. They’re both breathing hard, squaring off a little, and Tim wonders what the hell Posey’s thinking. The big catcher's lost his jacket and his shirt’s all the way unbuttoned and half-way off one shoulder. Tim’s t-shirt and hoodie got dropped someplace in the hallway as Buster picked them off one at a time, barely breaking the kiss long enough to yank the soft cotton over Tim’s head.

Now that they’ve come to rest, Tim lets his head fall back against the arm of the couch. Impulsively he reaches out and uses the back of his hand to stroke the edge of Posey’s cheekbone, right where the color is. The catcher closes his eyes and sighs a little, and his restless hands, thumbs unbuttoning Tim’s fly, come to a stop.

He opens his eyes again- Tim can see the sheen of sweat along the hollow of his neck - and lets out a breath. - I took Kristen and her dad out, that place in the Richmond, he says matter-of-factly, - but we got home and I couldn’t sleep. You guys eat and then go out after?

Tim nods. - Wilson and Burrell. I just got back.

The conversation’s so ordinary that Tim panics for a moment, certain that he’s brought Posey to his senses.

But Posey settles back on his haunches and puts both arms out, pulling Tim towards him by the shoulders till their faces are close again, and Posey’s eyes are drilling him, like he’s about to ask a tough question that he knows will draw fire.

\- What you did today, what we did today, Buster says softly - that was something. No, Iemme explain, he says in a rush when he sees how Tim’s pulled back, perplexed. - I've been catching you awhile, and most of the time it's OK. But today was different. It was like you trusted me. You never did that before, Timmy. Never.

Something in Tim’s face must be reassuring to Buster, because his shoulders slide back and widen and his hands soften and he draws Tim’s mouth to his again. Tim hesitates a little, freaked out by how good it feels, by how much he wants it, but Posey’s so sure and so settled in the way he’s going about slipping his hands around Tim’s hips to cup his ass and tonguing the head of his cock that Tim just gives himself up to it. He arches his back and lets himself slide halfway off the couch, and he does nothing to stop the sounds that are welling up into his mouth as Posey goes to work on his dick. It’s so good that for a moment his eyes squeeze shut and he can feel the sweat slicking the insides of his thighs, but then he has to open his eyes to take in how hot this is, the way it rhymes with the sweet sound of the strike call and everything that goes with it.

//

Later he doesn’t remember how they wound up stretched out on the couch afterward, Tim on his side wedged into the crack in the cushions and Buster with one arm around him and the other trailing, picking the carpet, his sweat- and come-slicked stomach rising and falling with his breath. It seemed both impossible and inevitable that the length of Posey’s body, usually so hard and self-contained, had melted into his, Buster’s chin in the crook of his shoulder, his hair tangled around Buster’s neck. The catcher’s long eyelashes over his half-shut eyes, and the way that faint smile made a dimple that Tim’d never seen before.

What he does remember is how that was only the first inning of another kind of complete game, one that stretched so far into the night that it was light by the time they called it. Buster setting him up, getting him ready with his hands and his mouth, and then the measured and certain strokes of his hips, his balls slapping against Tim’s thighs, watching him like no lover had ever watched Tim before. He’d known how to bring Tim close and then he’d had the patience to stop and lean forward and breathe softly into Tim’s open mouth, breathing in a question that Tim could answer wordlessly, with his ass and his tongue and with the legs he’d locked around Buster’s hips.

There was that one moment he’ll never forget, where he was holding his breath and he’d pulled his shoulders up around his neck to keep from coming and he’d opened his eyes to see Buster looking straight at him. When Posey’d whispered _don’t think, son, it can only hurt the ball club,_ Tim had pushed him off, laughing and cursing and telling him to fuck off, and Buster had simply rolled him over and taken him from behind, whispering _le_ _t me call it, you stubborn little motherfucker - I'm not gonna let you down_ as his breath feathered the back of Tim’s neck.

When they’d fucked themselves dry, they’d sunk back, still tangled up in each other, into the bed. The last thing Tim felt before sleep was the flannel blanket being pulled over him, and Buster’s arms around him and the hiss of his slow soft breath in the hollow of Tim’s ear.

 

 

.

**Author's Note:**

> Posey's season-ending injury at the plate happened on May 24, 2011, a few days after most of this story is set.
> 
> Posey's comment to the press after Lincecum's May 21 complete-game shutout: "It's hard to compare outings. He's so good. He was himself."
> 
> Most of the baseball facts are canon (Ryan Sweeney? Where are you now?), but _everything else is fiction, the product of the writer's imagination; never happened, never will._


End file.
